Nightmare holiday: Dutch tourists robbed and terrorised

Tourism and crime: Dutch tourists held up at gunpoint, robbed and terrorised in bus from airport

27 September 2017 - 06:14
By Nico Gous

Police Minister Fikile Mbalula and the Dutch ambassador to South Africa, Marisa Gerards, were at a press briefing at a lodge in Fourways. Mbalula said the robbery of Dutch tourists was an attack on the tourism sector and the economy
Image:
Alon Skuy

Forty-nine hours after a group of Dutch tourists set foot in South Africa for a fun three-week holiday they returned battered and bruised to their home country after becoming the victims of yet another airport robbery.

"We are safe now but we are in shock and want to go back. We just landed for a 22-day trip but the fun has gone," one of the passengers, Peter Bakker, told the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf.

The group of 36 tourists, most of them over 60, were scheduled to leave South Africa on a flight on Tuesday night and arrive back in Amsterdam around 10.30am on Wednesday - spending not even 50 hours in this country.

The tourists, who arrived in South Africa on Sunday night, were robbed on their way from OR Tambo International Airport to their accommodation in Fourways.

Their bus, they said, was stopped by a vehicle with police markings. One man was dressed in a police uniform, the other five in civilian clothing.

Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said the robbery undermined South Africa as a tourism destination.

He told ambassador Gerards: "We don't have words to express our embarrassment and our regret for what happened to the people of the Netherlands."

Mbalula met the Dutch tourists on Tuesday afternoon.

Police spokesman Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo said no arrests had been made.

The Southern Africa Tourism Services Association expressed concern that the attack would harm the industry.

"It is not good for our image," Satsa's CEO David Frost said. "Exactly what impact it will have [on tourism] we don't know. It is clearly not going to have a positive impact.

"What was good is that there was a very co-ordinated response from South African Tourism, and many of Satsa members, to sort the issue out as quickly as we could.

"When an incident like this occurs we have to use it as a learning opportunity," said Frost. "The important thing is that we all need to sit down with the minister and his top team to sort out pre-emptive measures and operating procedures that will prevent these things from happening again."

According to Stats SA, the Netherlands ranked ninth on the list of countries of tourists visiting South Africa in mid-2017.